


Drunk On Moonlight

by TheseusInTheMaze



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Body Horror, Dancing, Drugs mention, M/M, Mind Control, Podfic Welcome, Surreal, alcohol mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-07 14:57:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16410653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheseusInTheMaze/pseuds/TheseusInTheMaze
Summary: Ryan and Shane are walking down a long and strange road.





	Drunk On Moonlight

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Buzzfeed Challenge, based on a particular verse of _Totentanz_ by Goethe. 
> 
> Thank you, CamillaBluejay for editing!

“I’m not saying I believe in zombies,” said Ryan, as he and Shane walked down a long, winding path. 

“You’re not saying you believe in zombies,” Shane said, “you literally posited that as a reason for the Roanoke colony disappearance.”

“Well, okay, yes,” said Ryan, “but I wasn’t actually _serious_ about it.”

“And underwater area fifty one?”

They were still walking - the moon leered at them like a tacky Halloween mask, and the trees on either side of the path dripped like something out of the woodblocks of a fairytale, casting strange shapes up into the sky.

The path they were walking along had an almost luminescent quality to it, and it went on and on into the distance.

“I put that in as a _joke_ ,” said Ryan.

When had they gotten here?

For that matter, why were they here in the first place ?

Where was “here,” exactly?

“I can never tell with you,” said Shane, and he was looking sidelong at Ryan, his expression unreadable. “Is this like that one t-shirt?”

The fact that Ryan didn’t know where they were walking should probably have been worrying - he probably should have stopped, should have called a pause in everything, so they could regroup and figure out what the fuck was going on. 

But he wasn’t. 

He looked over into Shane’s face, opened his mouth to ask… what? _Were we given funny brownies?_ or maybe _Is any of this real?_ or _Are we real?_ but what came out instead was “which one t-shirt?”

His hands were still in his pockets, the tip of one finger against the familiar leather of his wallet, the tips of his other fingers against the metal of his keys, cold despite the fact that they were so close to his body. 

Everything seemed real - almost _too_ real - a bit like the first time he’d eaten a “special” brownie, and had become aware of his own thoughts as outside entities to himself. 

Or maybe that was happening to him, right now - exactly how sober was he?

“Oh,” said Shane, and he took his hands out of his pockets, making one of those wide gestures with his arms that he was wont to do. “Something like, “that was gross, unless you’re into it,” or something along those lines.”

“So you’re saying that my conspiracy theories are up there with that one dude who is forever hitting on you?”

The ground under their boots was solid, and each step sent the familiar shock up his leg, like every other time he walked. 

The ground was solid under the soles of his boots, and each step seemed to match his heartbeat.

Maybe it was just the boots, protecting his feet.

He could hear Shane - Shane’s breathing, Shane’s steps, the rustle of Shane’s clothing.

The trees, though? They were silent - eerily silent.

There weren’t even any birds calling, no insects. 

The weather was completely… normal. Ryan was wearing a puffy vest over a long sleeve t-shirt, and he was fine.

Shane was wearing a buttoned up flannel shirt, and seemed equally fine.

“Do you ever get hit on by a dude?”

Shane’s tone was mild, full of polite inquiry, but Ryan found himself blushing.

“I mean,” said Ryan, “it’s been known to happen. Occasionally.”

“Curly doesn’t count,” said Shane. “He hits on everyone. I don’t know what he’d do if anyone actually said yes.”

Ryan snorted, but didn’t really have much of a response to that. 

“I wouldn’t mind getting hit on by one particular dude,” said Shane, in a calm sort of voice, and that shouldn’t have been quite as earth shattering as it was.

That got Ryan to stop walking, and Shane took a few extra steps on his ridiculous bone stilts, before he realized Ryan wasn’t next to him, and he looked over at Ryan, one eyebrow up.

“What?”

“You’d be okay being hit on by a guy?”

Shane shrugged.

He’d stopped walking, and he crossed his arms across the front of his chest.

He was shifting from foot to foot, and looked… nervous, but why?

Ryan wanted to keep walking - wanted to keep moving towards the end of the path, whatever that happened to be. 

He didn’t know where the start of the path was, didn’t know where the end was, but he had to keep going.

Just standing here was a bit like bracing against the waves, as the undertow pulled him out towards the great expanse of the sea.

He cast his mind towards the idea of changing directions - of turning around and returning the way they’d come, or maybe veering off of the path and into the trees, and his stomach tried to rise in his throat.

… okay.

He began to walk again, and Shane’s legs were trembling when Ryan caught up with him.

They started walking again, at that same ambling pace, their feet crunching in time. 

“I’d take it as a compliment,” said Shane, “and if I liked the guy… hey, why not?”

“Right,” said Ryan. 

His mind was racing - this was supposed to be a big deal.

He could feel some small part of his mind jumping up and down, yelling about the fact that this _was_ , in fact, a big deal - that this was something that he should have been paying attention to.

But they were still walking together.

“So…,” said Ryan, and then tried to say _where are we going?_

Nothing came out.

“So,” Shane echoed back. “Are you going to freak out at me?”

“I’m not going to freak out about that, no,” said Ryan, but that wasn’t really true either, was it?

There was panic in the center of his gut, like a boiling hot ball of aluminium, but mostly he was calm.

Almost artificially calm, come to think of it.

Hm.

“So what are you freaking out about?”

Shane’s voice was still calm, and now that Ryan thought about it, that wasn’t normal either, was it?

Shane was a calm dude, yeah, but not usually to this degree.

“Where… where things are going,” Ryan said. 

“Where do you think things are going?”

The first bit of anxiety had entered into Shane’s voice, and that was almost a relief.

They were still walking, the crunch of their boots lining up with the beating of their hearts, the in and out of their breath. 

“I don’t know,” said Ryan. “That’s why I’m asking.”

“Why do you think that I know?”

“You tend to come off as knowing it all,” said Ryan. “At least… in these types of scenarios.”

“Which kinds of scenarios, Ryan?” 

Shane sounded legitimately belligerent this time, and Ryan never knew he’d be so damn grateful for that nail-against-a-saw-blade tone in Shane’s voice.

“These,” said Ryan, and he gestured at the two of them.

He wanted to gesture at the whole… everything, but that didn’t seem to be an option.

Why wasn’t it an option?

Ryan took his hands out of his pockets, and he reached out for one of Shane’s, taking it in his own and squeezing it tightly.

Shane’s fingers were bony, the tips cold against Ryan’s knuckles.

Shane looked down at Ryan’s hand in his own, looked up into Ryan’s face, and he raised an eyebrow. 

Ryan raised one back.

They were still walking, but there was a shape in front of them now.

Ryan couldn’t make out _what_ it was, exactly, but… it was a structure of some sort, and it stood out against the grinning moon. 

“Right,” said Shane.

His pulse was beating frantically in his fingers, and his palm, sweaty. 

“That looks,” said Ryan, and nothing else came out.

Okay.

So they were… somehow unable to comment on their surroundings?

Some kind of magical something or other?

His mind shied away from the idea of magic - even here, even now, he wasn’t really sure if he could handle the idea of magic being a thing that was real.

Okay.

So not magic.

Some kind of… moon madness?

Where _were_ they?

“Hey, Shane?”

“Mmm?”

It was a little easier to think, when they were touching like this - Shane’s fingers seemed to be anchoring him, making himself feel more like a real, living thing and less like… well, whatever it was that he was.

The hyper-realness was fading away, replaced with his usual sense of self.

“Where are we going?”

“You know,” Shane said, “I was going to ask you the same question.” 

Shane’s voice was light, almost cheerful, but there was some kind of underlying… something or other under it.

If Ryan hadn’t known Shane better, he might have called it terror.

But Shane didn’t experience terror over things that made sense, instead of his weird heroin needle thing, or his equally weird avocado thing. Nothing about the big guy made sense, so why would he start making sense now?

The luminous path seemed to be getting shorter, although that wasn’t possible, was it?

Paths didn’t get longer or shorter, unless they were walking faster. 

It was almost as if they weren’t walking at all - they were lifting their feet up and down, but the path itself was moving under them, like an airport sidewalk.

The trees besides them weren’t moving at all.

“Is this real?”

Shane’s voice was still calm, with that same edge of hysteria.

_Me too, big guy._

“I think it’s… as real as it can be,” Ryan said, and even getting those words out felt like trying to trek through a bog.

“Right,” said Shane. “That looks like a church.”

“I wonder why we’re going to a church,” Ryan said. 

“When was the last time you went?”

Ryan tried to remember.

He was also remembering that he was still walking along, holding Shane’s hand, and okay, it was… it was kind of weird to be doing this, but it made him feel safer, and that was the important part, right?

His heart should have been racing, he should have been sweating more - he should have been having a full blown panic attack.

Especially with those strange things on the edge of his vision, which kept darting away when he looked towards them.

“A while ago,” Ryan allowed. “How about you?”

“Not really from a church going family,” said Shane. “I mean, I can see the good it does, at least in theory, but in practice… getting up early is not really a Madej strong point.”

Ryan snorted.

“That’s why you never did any sports, I suspect,” said Ryan. 

“Yeah,” said Shane. “I stayed inside and read books, so you don’t see _me_ talking about bullshit like a zombie plague hitting Roanoke!”

Something about the conversation was beginning to unstick the fuzziness in Ryan’s head, although he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.

Maybe it was just the familiar give and take - these sorts of conversations were as familiar as the grooves on a record, and could be replayed like one. 

Although they were still walking, step by step by step, ever closer to the big church, the steeple silhouetted against the grinning moon.

“We’d be pretty fucked, if a zombie plague came here,” said Ryan, and there was a twist in his head, like someone turning a corkscrew into his temple.

"Don't tell me you've actually thought about zombie plagues," said Shane, in a voice that was probably meant to be teasing, but came out strangled.

The church was closer now - Ryan could make out the shape of the gates, the graveyard surrounding it.

"I mean, not in the way that some people, like, stocking up on canned goods or some shit like that," said Ryan, "but I've considered a few things."

The corkscrew feeling in his head was getting stronger, and he couldn't put his finger on why - couldn't really think, because it _hurt_ , and it didn't seem to be stopping.

And then they were in front of the churchyard - the graveyard?

What was the difference between a churchyard and a graveyard?

Ryan licked his lips, and he squeezed Shane's hand. 

Shane squeezed his back.

"So," Shane said, and there was something almost brittle about his voice, "how about that, huh?"

"What "that" are we talking about?" 

Ryan licked his lips.

There was an old iron fence, half eaten alive by rust, surrounding the place, and the graves were old, covered in moss, pitted with age.

Ryan's heart was in his throat.

"I'm not sure," said Shane slowly, "but...."

"But?"

There was old marble, half fallen over, half rotten, if marble could rot.

It glowed in the moonlight.

"I don't think we should stay out here," said Shane.

Ryan frowned.

"See, I'm getting the opposite vibe," he said. "We should stay. We should... we should watch."

"What are we watching?"

Shane's expression was thoughtful.

"... that, I don't know," said Ryan. "But we should stay."

The churchyard was glowing as bright as day, and panic was beginning to fill Ryan like water in a glass.

"Let's go into the church," said Shane, and he began to walk.

Ryan let go of Shane's hand, and then... the need to stay got stronger.

Got so strong that Ryan's feet felt like they were _rooted_ to the floor, and his heartbeat sped up.

Okay, no.

This wasn't his own mind. 

He wasn't going to let his own mind do this, he wasn't going to be forced into doing... whatever this was, wherever this was.

He wasn't going to be part of this bullshit.

He grabbed Shane's hand again, and the compulsion lessened almost immediately. 

"Fuck," Shane said.

"Right," said Ryan. "So... let's go in."

It was hard to even _say_ the words, let alone the idea of doing it, but he had to.

He had to get the fuck out. 

He had to do _something_.

"I thought you didn't want to," said Shane.

"I didn't," said Ryan, "but... now I do. Sort of."

"Only sort of?"

Ryan blinked, and it was as if everything else was blinking as well - the light of the moon seemed to be getting brighter, and Ryan's anxiety was beginning to crest, trying to climb up his throat like some kind of rodent, rank and scrabbling.

He took a deep breath.

"It's complicated," Ryan said finally. "This isn't like fucking. Consider me consenting."

"Fair enough, fair enough," said Shane, and he squeezed Ryan's fingers.

Ryan lifted his foot up to take a step... and kept it up.

It took almost a minute for him to get his foot to move, to untense the muscles of his legs, but then it was another step, and another, and it was almost like walking on needles, except _not_ at the same time.

His heart was in his throat, and his eyes were hot, but he was holding on to Shane, and they were just... taking steps, down the luminous path (which was somehow immaculate, even though the graves were all so overgrown and the fence was rusted, the door of the church falling off of its hinges). 

He licked his lips, and he reached out to open the door, which somehow didn't fall off in his hand.

Thank fuck - he didn't want to get in trouble for disturbing some kind of historical landmark.

... was this place a landmark? 

It had the feeling of being something that would have some kind of trust protecting it. 

"What kind of architecture is this?"

Ryan's adam's apple bobbed when he swallowed, as they stepped into the dimly lit space.

There was almost no moonlight in here - some of it shone through the windows, but all that really did was give shape to the shadows.

Ryan's head cleared - he could think in something approaching a straight line now.

He was still holding Shane's hand - it was warm against his own, and the pulse was still beating. 

He let go, cautiously, and the weird… compulsion left.

“I think… I think the moon has something to do with this,” Ryan said, slowly. 

“Something to do with this?”

Shane looked at him sidelong. 

He’d crossed his arms across his chest, and he looked… well, if Ryan didn’t know better, he’d have thought that Shane looked nervous.

“Yeah.”

“Right,” said Ryan. “The moon.”

It was like trying to think through taffy.

“What’s going on out there?” 

The whole room was empty, but for a few scattered bits of broken furniture strewn about on the floor, and their footprints were the only visible ones in the dust.

There was a (remarkably sturdy looking) staircase at the back of the church, and Ryan indicated it, although everything felt faintly like he was playing into something.

What else was he supposed to do?

“We could check it out from there?”

“Is there a window?”

“If nothing else, we’ll probably be out of view of the moon,” said Shane.

As if the moon was looking down at them malevolently, instead of just being a celestial body in the sky, the nightlight of the heavens. 

"So where... do you think we are?"

Ryan was keeping step with Shane as they made their way up the stairs - their steps seemed to echo in the small church.

"I have no idea," said Shane. "Another dusty empty place. At least you're not trying to talk to any ghosts."

"I don't think there are any ghosts here," said Ryan, and he mostly believed himself.

Almost.

"It feels weird to be doing this, without a camera," said Shane, and he ran a hand along his chest, where the straps for his body cam would normally be.

Ryan stuffed his hands into his own pockets, to prevent himself from reaching out and feeling as well.

"Maybe we're being pranked," he suggested, as they made their way into the attic.

It had a surprisingly high ceiling, and there were crossbeams, like something out of an artsy black and white photo.

The "black and white photo" thing wasn't really helped by the brightness of the moonlight, which was creeping in from the great big hole in the side of the wall.

It might have been a window once, or maybe there had been... what?

Come to think of it, _what_ could take a big chunk out of the side of a building like someone taking a bite out of an apple.

Or a gingerbread house.

"Are we sure this building isn't made of gingerbread?"

Ryan looked up at Shane, and he hadn't even realized he'd been talking until his lips were moving, at which point he blushed, because... well.

"I don't think it is, no," said Shane, and at least the guy wasn't making fun on him.

Thank fuck.

They were under a crossbeam, more or less out of view of the moonlight, but everything was still in shades of black and white and grey, stark and terrifying.

Shane's face was pale in the moonlight, his lips like a smudge of ink, his eyes glittering out like they were coming out of a pair of caverns.

And they were looking out the window, into the churchyard below them.

It was lit up like midday, and the wind was picking up, rusting the grass and the weeds and the long, lean flowers.

Had those flowers come from the bouquets left by mourners who knew how long ago, the seeds left to run riot?

Ryan was holding onto himself again, his fingertips digging into his own biceps, his heart beating very loudly in his chest.

And then there was more movement, and Ryan realized that one of the graves was opening.

It was opening like a mouth, organically gaping, and then there were a pair of skeletal hands sneaking out, pulling up a long body, wrapped in a rotting shroud that somehow managed to still be snow white in places.

The corpse was of a woman - she must have been a young women when she died, her hair (what remained of it) long and trailing down her back, and when she turned her head, she was in profile of the moon.

Most of her nose was still there, although Ryan could see her molars through the places where her cheek had rotted through, and that was interesting - he wasn't wearing his glasses, and it wasn't as if he could usually see things from this distance, with this clarity.

He was noticing things as if he was a very long way off, as if he wasn't actually inhabiting his body, but maybe the space three feet to the left. 

A scream tried to rise in Ryan's throat, and he noted it dispassionately.

It didn't leave, but he was moving deeper into the shadows, pressing closer to Shane, and then his eyes were torn away from the woman, as he looked up at Shane's face.

Shane was making... some kind of face.

Absurdly, Ryan was reminded of a cat, smelling something bad.

Shane's nose was wrinkled, and his lips were parted. Ryan could see Shane's teeth as well, and then he was remembering the sight of the woman's teeth in her cheek, and the scream tried to claw its way up his throat again.

He reached out and grabbed hold of Shane's wrist, because Shane was tensing up, as if he was going to step closer to the hole in the wall, to get a closer look at the churchyard.

"No," Ryan said quietly. 

It was the first thing he'd said, since the two of them had seen the grave open, and he was immediately terrified, down to his very guts - what if the corpse heard them, saw them?

But she kept walking across the churchyard.

Shane let out a shaky breath, and then he was leaning against Ryan, and he was pulling Ryan closer to him, until he had his finger hooked in Ryan's belt loop.

Shane's eyes were glued on the bright churchyard, and so were Ryan's - the two of them were staring, and Ryan couldn't tell which of them were shivering, or maybe they were both shivering?

There was a sound, and then Ryan saw another grave opening, and the roots that were trailing on either side of it looked a bit like teeth.

_Medieval people believed that the entrance to Hell was a mouth,_ narrated some part of Ryan's mind, as the terror began to sink into his bones, poisoning his thoughts like so much mercury.

Shane's fingers slid into Ryan's.

"So I don't think you can say "I told you so" this time," Shane said, right in Ryan's ear, and his voice, at least, was cutting through some of the static in Ryan's head.

"Mmm?"

"These aren't ghosts," said Shane. "You can't claim that ghosts exist, in this kinda scenario."

There was an underlying note of hysteria, on the very edge of his voice. 

Ryan couldn't blame the guy.

"Well, okay, so I never thought about arguing about whether zombies exist," Ryan said, his voice equally quiet. "So I guess you're right there. But still."

"Wish you had your camera right now?"

"Something like that."

Ryan's heart was in his throat, and his stomach was dropping.

He hadn't been aware that those kinds of feelings were actually real - he'd read them often enough, but the idea of them actually being real... that was a trippy thing to think about.

Wasn't it interesting, how he was being so reasonable and thoughtful, as he saw something that was so against nature and terrifying?

It was!

"Ryan," Shane said, and his voice drew Ryan out of whatever trance he was in, "Ryan, you're hyperventilating."

"Am I?"

"Yeah," said Shane. "Please don't pass out on me."

"What, you don't think you could carry me down the stairs by yourself or something?"

"If you weren't here, I might be gibbering off into the moonlight like something out of a pulp novel from the twenties," said Shane.

He said it in such a calm, thoughtful tone of voice that Ryan almost didn't believe him.

Almost.

"Oh," said Ryan. 

There were more graves opening - the sound of it was a bit like someone trying to comb their hair when they had a big knot in it - a sound that was almost like a _ripping_ , although maybe that might have been more of the various roots being torn.

More people began to crawl out of the graves, all in various states of decomposition.

In all honesty, it was kind of impressive, how few skeletons there were.

One would think, as old as the churchyard was, the dead would all be nothing but ashes and dust at this point.

All of the people were wearing white shrouds, but some of them were practically fresh - he saw someone with dyed hair, someone else wearing modern day glasses on a face that was only bloated a little from decomposition.

Which made no sense, because the graves they crawled out of were as old as any of the other ones, as covered in plants and moss as anything else.

The dead milled about, and Ryan was reminded, absurdly, of people waiting for a sale at a mall.

"It's like a Black Friday doorbuster combined with some kind of zombie walk," Ryan whispered, and Shane snorted, looking genuinely amused.

At least the terror had cleared up some more of the foggy feeling in Ryan's head.

"I've worked on Black Friday," said Shane in a low voice. "At least these folks aren't shoving."

Indeed, if it weren't for the fact that they were all in white shrouds and in various stages of rotting, the gathering would have been downright _dull_.

The corpses just... stood there, occasionally shifting from foot to foot, illuminated by the moonlight, their white shrouds seeming to glow in the brightness.

And then the clock in the church began to go off.

It was deafening in the attic, and Ryan and Shane pressed closer together, covering their ears, curling forward.

Ryan cried out in pain, and was seized with more immediate terror, because what if the corpses heard them?

But the corpses were ignoring them, even as the bell went on ringing, and Shane's chest was pressed into Ryan's shoulder, Shane's big hands clasped over his own ears. 

It was midnight, Ryan realized, and the corpses were... pairing up?

They weren't pairing up by gender (different or same), they weren't pairing up by age or level of decomposition. As far as Ryan could tell it was random, or else driven by some logic known only to the dead.

And they began to dance.

... it was like the Haunted Mansion, almost, except no, because this wasn't clever special effects and elegant waltz music.

The only noise was the wind, as the corpses picked their way across the churchyard, somehow avoiding the gaping maws of the open graves. 

Ryan pressed closer to Shane, and he uncovered his ears, as the great ringing seemed to have quieted down.

The echoes of it could still be felt in Ryan's bones, and he was feeling the urge to... what?

"This feels like something out of a movie," Shane said, his voice quiet. 

It was amazing that Ryan could still hear him speaking, honestly.

"It kinda does," Ryan agreed, and he licked his lips.

The churchyard was full of the swish of fabric, and the noises of bodies moving together. 

And then... Shane was taking a step back, until he was almost in the moonlight, and he was offering Ryan a hand.

"May I have this dance?"

"In case you didn't notice," Ryan said, "we're not dead."

"Yeah," said Shane, "but I can't think of anything else to do."

The idea of escaping flitted across Ryan's mind, only to be squashed down.

There wasn't any space that wasn't seen by the corpses, and Ryan didn't know how said corpses would react to someone walking by.

"We could keep watching," Ryan pointed out.

"We could," said Shane, but he looked uncomfortable.

It was that same... almost compulsion that they'd felt before, and Ryan was stepping up, reaching out for Shane's hands before he had a chance to really think.

He took them in his own hands, and then they were shuffling.

Preternatural magical compulsion or not, the two of them were both used to dancing with someone shorter than the other, both used to leading.

They ended up doing some kind of modified middle school shuffle, moving in circles in the middle of the attic, dipping in and out of the moonlight. 

It was a bit like being drunk, or being high - some kind of altered state of consciousness, except _not_ , because there was some part of Ryan still there, noticing things, jumping up and down, trying to get his attention.

All he could pay attention to was the warmth of Shane’s forehead against his own, the beat of Shane’s pulse in Shane’s wrist, the way they were still moving together, even if it was weird and kind of awkward.

“We should go down there,” Shane said, and his voice rumbled through Ryan’s chest. “Or at least… some part of me is saying we should.”

“Yeah?”

Ryan was feeling the same compulsion - dancing like this was scratching some deep, inner itch, but it felt… wrong, to be doing it by themselves up here, alone, away from everyone else.

There should have been other bodies around them, turning and turning. 

“But I feel… I feel like that’d be a bad idea,” Shane said, and his voice was careful.

He nearly tripped, and Ryan caught him.

“I think there’s something we’re missing here,” said Ryan, as he held Shane closer to him, until they were dancing in a way that’d get them kicked out of a middle school dance. 

“What?”

Ryan pulled himself away from Shane - loath as he was to do it, although was it because of this weird compulsion or his sorta-kinda crush on the guy? - and made his way carefully back to the hole in the wall, until he was close enough to it that he could look down into the churchyard without being in direct line of the moon.

The corpses were beginning to break away from each other, shuffling towards their graves, disappearing into them.

The earth closed over them, with a noise like someone dropping a big bag of sand onto a patch of grass, and it was enough to give Ryan the heebie jeebies.

Eventually, there were no corpses left, but there were two empty graves.

“Oh,” said Ryan.

His heart was beating in his head, very loudly.

“What - oh.”

Ryan was shaking again. 

He’d thought he was done with that.

Go figure.

He took a further step back, still holding on to Shane, and then another, and another, and then his foot hit air, and he was falling backwards, tumbling down the stairs, and there was the sensation of his head hitting a stair, the sensation of Shane’s bony elbow in his stomach, and then….

Ryan jerked awake.

He was in a motel room in a double bed, and he was panting, flat on his back.

He was shaking.

Everything _hurt_.

He looked over at the bed next to him, to see Shane staring back at him, eyes wide in the dimness.

“Well,” said Shane. “That’s coincidental.”

That same edge of hysteria in his voice, 

Ryan’s feet hurt, as if he’d been walking for ages and ages.

And when he stood up, he groaned, lifting his shirt up.

There was a bruise along his side, about the same shape and size as Shane’s elbow.

“Um,” said Ryan. 

Outside, the moon grinned down at them, turning the wet parking lot to a night sky full of stars.

**Author's Note:**

> Like this fic?
> 
> Want me to write you something like it, or something completely different?
> 
> Come talk to me on my tumblr, theseusinthemaze.tumblr.com!


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